Sophia Weng (a junior on Blair A) and I are organizing a panel discussion to talk about women in quizbowl. The discussion will be in room M101 at the Marquis on Saturday, May 25th, from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM, about an hour after afternoon games at HSNCT end. Here's what Sophia has to say about the event:

“Last year, hundreds of girls gathered for a photo at HSNCT to show that girls can both do quizbowl and love it. However, we still have a long way to go before women are equally and fairly represented in the quizbowl community. Therefore, this year at HSNCT, we plan to build off of the momentum from last year’s efforts by hosting a panel discussion about women in quizbowl with a panel of recent and current high school quizbowl players. We will be taking questions and comments from the audience, and we would like to create a vibrant, polite discussion.

We will be discussing why there is a gender imbalance in the game, experiences with tokenism among the community, and what we can all do, regardless of gender, to make our quizbowl programs more accepting, and, hopefully, more female! We’d like to be able to represent many different facets of quizbowl, so if you have something to say, or you’d just like to listen, please come! We invite everyone to bring their opinions, experiences, and questions!”

If you have more questions, please email Sophia at [email protected] or contact me via the forums or Discord.

If you’d like to suggest a discussion topic, check out our quizpolling post (link), or message me or Sophia directly.

A more personal note: as a boy who is helping to organize this event, I want to see other men come to this event. Sophia was clear to me while we were planning this that there aren’t enough women currently playing quizbowl to change quizbowl without the help of male allies. Quizbowl needs more men to come to this discussion and focus on being better allies.

I really want to be there, but this is unfortunately going to conflict with META and Imaginary Landscapes. Is it possible this could get recorded for those of us who can't be there and posted online later?

I think that question is not a fair one. Those events have been announced some time previously and were the product of a lot of hard work of a variety of people. I think this panel will be excellent, but I also don't think people should be guilt-tripped into canceling existing plans to attend.

I really want to be there, but this is unfortunately going to conflict with META and Imaginary Landscapes. Is it possible this could get recorded for those of us who can't be there and posted online later?

We do plan to record this and post it online later. We know that there are a bunch of other side events being held Saturday night, but there was no way to schedule this without conflicting with something else, so we will record the panel for everybody who, for whatever reason, is unable to be there.

I really want to be there, but this is unfortunately going to conflict with META and Imaginary Landscapes. Is it possible this could get recorded for those of us who can't be there and posted online later?

We do plan to record this and post it online later. We know that there are a bunch of other side events being held Saturday night, but there was no way to schedule this without conflicting with something else, so we will record the panel for everybody who, for whatever reason, is unable to be there.

I'm not saying recording the discussion isn't a good idea, but don't you think this is more important than whatever side events are being run that night?

I know you've apologized already, Casey, but I want to respond to this. A lot of people who would want to attend this (such as myself) have already made plans to attend/play side events, and I'm certainly really interested in hearing what comes out of the panel.

It's awesome that you all have taken the initiative to put this together and I'm excited to attend.

I'm on the social media team for this weekend's tournament and would love to conduct a post interview with anyone on the panel who has a few minutes after this event- I really think it's important that we amplify this kind of content as much as we can.

Jeremy Nelson
Marist High School (IL) '05
Alcorn State University '09
University of Illinois '12

Thank you to everyone who came to the panel this weekend! Our panelists did a fantastic job, and we hope to have the discussion uploaded by the end of the week. We will be holding another women in Quizbowl event Saturday evening at PACE NSC this year, so if you missed the HSNCT discussion there is another chance to share your views! There is still plenty to cover, and we will likely continue our discussion in more of a forum setting as opposed to a panel. Thank you again, and look out for updates!

Thank you to everyone who came to the panel this weekend! Our panelists did a fantastic job, and we hope to have the discussion uploaded by the end of the week. We will be holding another women in Quizbowl event Saturday evening at PACE NSC this year, so if you missed the HSNCT discussion there is another chance to share your views! There is still plenty to cover, and we will likely continue our discussion in more of a forum setting as opposed to a panel. Thank you again, and look out for updates!

Thank you to everyone who came to the panel this weekend! Our panelists did a fantastic job, and we hope to have the discussion uploaded by the end of the week. We will be holding another women in Quizbowl event Saturday evening at PACE NSC this year, so if you missed the HSNCT discussion there is another chance to share your views! There is still plenty to cover, and we will likely continue our discussion in more of a forum setting as opposed to a panel. Thank you again, and look out for updates!

I really want to be there, but this is unfortunately going to conflict with META and Imaginary Landscapes. Is it possible this could get recorded for those of us who can't be there and posted online later?

We do plan to record this and post it online later. We know that there are a bunch of other side events being held Saturday night, but there was no way to schedule this without conflicting with something else, so we will record the panel for everybody who, for whatever reason, is unable to be there.

I heard this event went really well - props again for organizing it! I was wondering if a recording was made, and if so, when we can expect for that recording to be made available? Unfortunately I was unable to attend HSNCT, but I would be excited to listen/watch a recording, if one was available.